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Movie review: Sully

I’m no fan of flying, but I have to admit that 2009 emergency landing of United Airlines flight 1549 into the Hudson river was one of the most spectacular and miraculous stories to come out of aviation history. It made you appreciate how much experience some pilots have, and their ability to make lifesaving decisions so quickly is just extraordinary.

This is the story of that incident, but in particular, it is the story of Captain Sullenberger and the subsequent NTSB investigation into how Sully and his co-pilot handled the situation. This movie was a long time coming, and it’s pretty decent.

Tom Hanks plays Captain “Sully” Sullenberger – a man with over 40 years flying experience. Starting from flying a crop duster plane, to flying military aircraft, to a commercial airline pilot, Sully has spent a great deal of time in the air. And he also ran his own air incident investigations too.

We get to see a recreation of the disaster (a bird strike which took out BOTH engines) with visual effects supplied by my former employers, MPC. Unfortunately, I felt that MPC’s efforts weren’t up to their usual high standards – the aircraft model and environment felt far too much like Microsoft’s Flight Simulator. That said, I will give MPC credit where it’s due to the actual recreation of the rescue in the Hudson river. The invisible effects are better than the in-your-face effects.

Clint Eastwood – for it is he – directs well enough. The performance from Tom Hanks and the rest of the cast is very good, though I did feel it was a little forced in some areas – that is to say, it feels a little too over melodramatic. Sully feels a bit like a Movie of the Week rather than something that’s more solid. Nevertheless, you felt like cheering during the NTSB hearing in which Sully calmly takes down the investigators’ flight simulations – proving they were completely flawed.

All in all, Sully is a good 90-minute insight into what happened that fateful day. A little overplayed, maybe, but still entertaining.